Boycott Culture Forces CEOs to Walk Tightrope in Trump Era
Boycott Culture Forces CEOs to Walk Tightrope in Trump
Era
Study finds that 57% of executives say boycotts have
impact
Polarized climate has made it harder to avoid controversy
by Jennifer Kaplan
February 15, 2017, 3:45 AM PST February 15, 2017, 6:28 AM
PST
When the Budweiser brand prepared to release a
potentially controversial commercial two weeks ago, its social-media monitoring
team got to work.
The ad tackled the hot-button subject of immigration by
depicting founder Adolphus Busch coming to America in the 19th century, and the
company wasn’t sure how customers would react. So it tracked tens of thousands
of posts to see how the commercial was received and took solace when 78 percent
of online conversations were neutral or positive. Despite some pleas to boycott
Budweiser -- misspelled in a Twitter hashtag as “Budwiser” -- managers decided
they had made the right decision to air the ad.
Those types of deliberation are increasingly common for
companies in America’s polarized culture, which presents a damned-if-you-do,
damned-if-you-don’t dilemma. Advertise on Breitbart News and get boycotted.
Stop advertising on Breitbart and get boycotted. Cooperate with Trump and get
boycotted. Don’t cooperate with Trump and get boycotted.
It’s no longer possible for U.S. companies to avoid
controversy, so they often have to decide what groups are less risky to offend.
“Consumers are holding brands accountable as though they
were political candidates, and they’re voting again and again,” said Micho
Spring, head of global corporate practice at Weber Shandwick, a public
relations firm that handles crisis management.
A Weber Shandwick study, set to be released Wednesday,
found that 57 percent of top executives believe that boycotts can affect a
company’s bottom line. The survey polled more than 1,000 executives and 2,100
consumers around the globe last year, just as Donald Trump was wrapping up the
Republican nomination on his way to the White House.
The president himself urged consumers to boycott brands
while on the campaign trail, including Macy’s Inc. and Oreo cookies. More
recently, he upbraided Nordstrom Inc. for dropping the product line of daughter
Ivanka, opening another front in the boycott wars.
Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc., Starbucks Corp., Nike Inc.,
Uber Technologies Inc., Under Armour Inc. and Kellogg Co. are just some of the
companies that have faced the wrath of infuriated consumers on both sides in
the past year. Their reactions have included direct challenges to the
president’s policies, attempts to stay above the fray by appearing nonpolitical
-- and silence.
“It’s more important than ever for companies to
understand who they are and the value that they contribute to society, to their
employees, to their communities and to their consumers,” Spring said. “Because
those values need to be the platform upon which they decide whether or not to
respond to current events.”
Bud Brouhaha
Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, which owns the Budweiser brand,
is a case in point. Its immigration-themed commercial, which aired during the
Super Bowl on Feb. 5, included a man shouting “Go back home!” at the company’s
immigrant founder. Though AB InBev marketing head Marcel Marcondes said the
piece wasn’t meant to set off a controversy, “you can’t reference the American
Dream today without being part of the conversation.”
What’s clear from the Weber Shandwick survey is that
executives must figure out how to walk the tightrope. Findings include:
·
41 percent of shoppers and 46 percent of
executives say companies should express an opinion or take action on
controversial issues.
·
40 percent of consumers regularly or frequently
talk about how honest and ethical companies are.
·
34 percent say they’re buying more from
companies or brands that share their values.
·
When people want to learn more about a company,
64 percent say they care what they find about the brand on social media.
Coca-Cola Chief Executive Officer Muhtar Kent joined the
debate after Trump signed an executive order banning immigrants from seven
predominately Muslim countries. Kent said Trump’s ban, which has been blocked
by the courts, was against the company’s core values. Coca-Cola was subject to
a subsequent boycott hashtag the day after the Super Bowl. One of Coke’s
advertisements during the game was a three-year-old ad featuring people singing
“America the Beautiful” in their native languages.
“I made a public statement because of our resolute belief
and commitment as one of the largest employers in the world as a system --
770,000 associates around the world in more than 200 countries -- how resolute
we are in our commitment to diversity, our belief in fairness, inclusion,” Kent
said on a call with media. “Anything like that proposal would be contrary to
our core values and core beliefs.”
Pepsi Quiet
Meanwhile, rival PepsiCo Inc. stayed silent on the ban.
Even so, the company has remained on pro-Trump boycott lists due to CEO Indra
Nooyi’s previous comments. Two days after Trump’s election victory in November,
Nooyi, who was born in India, talked about the reaction of her family and
employees.
“Our employees were all crying and the questions that
they’re asking, especially those who are not white, ‘Are we safe?’ Women are
asking, ‘Are we safe?’ LGBT people are asking, ‘Are we safe?”’ she said at an
event sponsored by the New York Times. “I never thought I’d have to answer
those questions. The first thing that we all have to do is assure everybody in
the United States that they’re safe. Nothing has changed because of this
election. What we heard was election talk, and we will all come together and
unify the country.”
Since making those comments, Nooyi, a Hillary Clinton
supporter, joined the president’s Strategic and Policy Forum. She has remained
publicly silent on his various executive orders.
Even if boycotts don’t affect sales, a tarnished
reputation can hurt a brand or hinder a company’s ability to hire and retain
talented employees, Weber Shandwick’s Spring said.
That’s proved to be the case for Under Armour. The
Baltimore-based athletic brand was downgraded by an analyst at Susquehanna
International Group after CEO Kevin Plank called Trump a “real asset” to the
U.S. The comments drew rebukes from Under Armour’s own spokesmen, including
basketball star Steph Curry, and could take a toll on the company’s stock price
and reputation, analyst Sam Poser said in a report.
“It’s certainly a time of uncertainty and its a time
where you have to weigh actions and reactions in a very turbulent environment,”
Spring said. “But brands that know who they are and stand on principle are
gaining.”
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